I’m the Director of Technical Arts at my church (Bent Tree), so I oversee all the technical arts ministries. I’m coming into a new and long-awaited season of being able to put up the blueprints, take off my hard hat and be the pastor, shepherd and leader I am called to be. Praise God, this Sunday is Bent Tree’s official “Grand Opening”! After being in construction for 3 years, we are finally opening our doors wide to the community.

Many close to me have pointed out that I’ve been a little busy, a little (that’s an understatement) stressed and a little preoccupied with work the last year. I’m hesitantly glad to say that I think I’ve made it through the valley and am looking forward to moving forward as a church and as a Technical Arts ministry.

Let’s talk practical: I’ve blogged before about the team that it takes to pull off a Sunday. Only myself and our Audio Coordinator are paid. The rest of the team is an army of dedicated servants. It usually looks something like this:

FUTURE: TD at the switcher (the Video Director will just call the shots)

FUTURE: Prompt Screen Operator (we are going to move to 2 graphics operators, one for the screens that the people see and one just for the prompt screens that the singers see)

So, currently there are 16 “black shirts” serving around the main worship center on a Sunday. As you see, I hope to increase to at least 18 in the next few months. I’ve said it many times before and I’ll say it many more times: YOU MUST CONSTANTLY RECRUIT! For various reasons, you have to keep recruiting. Once we have more than enough graphic operators, we’ll split and have 2 graphic operators each week. If we had too many of them, we’d split again and have one for an effects screen (which we’re working on). If we got too many camera operators, then we’d add cameras 4 and 5 on stage left and stage right.

One note: all 16 are at rehearsal on Wed. night: EVERYONE. We do a complete run-through with full music, tech and any other elemenHold high the value of rehearsal.ts that might happen (drama, etc.) each Wed. night from 7p to 9p. That’s a blog post unto itself.Â Raise the bar. Set a standard for quality and value each person’s time and commitment. I don’t think it’s right for one person to miss and 15 others give up their time and be at rehearsal. ALL 16 must be there. Committing to serve on a given week means you’re “on” for Wed. night and Sunday. Our volunteers mark their availability via Planning Center Online – that’s another blog post all to itself. What a resource!

Usually I’m walking new team members around on Wed. nights, giving them the behind-the-scenes tour, introducing them to the team and passing them on to a volunteer team leader that trains them on their particulal place of service.

* Tomorrow’s blog will be about how new people get plugged in and where/how I start them out.

Another note: What I listed above is just what takes place in the main worship center. I’m working on a new position for an AV Coordinator to oversee the equipment throughout our campus. In putting together a job description, I realized we have 13 different venues (22 projectors) across our campus.

On a Sunday, “tech” is happening in classrooms, the Treehouse, the gym, the main worship center and our new FX Live family production that kicked off this past Sunday. The FX Live team has their own full tech team and uses IMAG (Image Magnification) in their production as well. NOTE: FX Live has 2 cameras right now (the same ones we used in our old worship center).

I’ll blog more about FX Live another time. You may have heard of North Point’s KidStuf – FX Live (FX stands for family experience) is based off of KidStuf – featuring worship for kids and parents led by singers, dancers and actors. They have a newly built 2 story theater/stage. I heard this past week that we have the largest family production theater in the country. Estimates are that we still turned away 200 people! We are meeting and planning on how to remedy this.

Below is a picture from this past Sunday’s official kick-off of FX Live:

More tomorrow on what I call “gateway ministries”.Â SO.. what does Sunday look like at your church?